


Waves, Soundwaves, Rush.

by LotusRox



Series: Waves Around Us [1]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, First Crush, First Meetings, Historical Accuracy, Hopeful Ending, Introspection, M/M, Religious Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 07:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11778306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LotusRox/pseuds/LotusRox
Summary: The first time Ma put him to pamphleteer, Credence had been ten and it had been a neighborhood thing, nothing that took him further than Brooklyn Bridge a couple of days a week. He was of age to start earning his keep in a factory, Ma had reminded him, and wasn’t this much better? He wouldn’t have dared to disobey, he made sure to stay inside the limits and do his job the best he could. She was harsh and had a heavy hand, but only because she wanted him to be better - to save his immortal soul and grant him a blessed existence in Paradise. Credence had been grateful.Another eleven years and even the streets he had been afforded now pull Credence deeper into himself. His is a kind of work better suited to a speaker, and whatever fight had been in him had died so long ago he can’t remember how it felt like.------Or,The One Where Credence Meets Percival Graves And Something Clicks.





	Waves, Soundwaves, Rush.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is about eight or nine months too late to be trendy but I needed in my heart to write the thing. I'm sorry.
> 
> [Maggiedragon @ AO3]() is the actual best and my fave - she did me the A++ Solid Gold Favor of beta'ing this fic and y'all should 100% go check her stuff.
> 
> My most heartfelt Thank Yous to [Na Shao](http://archiveofourown.org/users/na_shao) and [Wilwarindi](http://archiveofourown.org/users/wilwarindi/pseuds/wilwarindi) as well!

Credence had caught once or twice the sound of a radio failing to hold a signal - a broken electrical artifact calling out for something to receive, invisible words and music to grab from thin air. Something to gather inside and spit out, coherent, reformed.

 

It’s the same static that thrums in his legs on the aftermath of an entire night kneeling by the foot of his bed and praying away insomnia, the hum inside his bones whenever Ma has gotten tired of beating him and pain subsides enough he can come back to the real world.

 

The church is three blocks away from the mouth of East River, and more than the stench of it, what he hates the most is its noisy rush.

 

It stays inside his mind, dulls it as he stands in the corner of Bowery and Worth - a prized intersection, loads of traffic on foot as people hurry to and from governmental buildings set in what used to be one of the most dangerous neighborhoods of New York. Passersby part around him and he feels like a rough black stone in the middle of a stream, unseen and immobile and slowly growing worn by the pressure and the friction.

 

_ “May I interest you on the New Salem Society, sir?” _

 

So many reasons to fall into a deep trance. Drab repetition, life gurgling through the city and coalescing into loud, charged silence. The hook piercing his chest, eternal. The miserable wet coldness of late April on a year where spring hadn’t came at all.

 

He wakes up, stays for a little bit observing people the best his bowed head allows. Not all of them blend together at first, but once they start doing so, he goes back to counting the bricks in the pavement, the number of figures in the masonry of the buildings, spares a glance for Chatham Square Library and wishes he could shield himself from the wind by the entrance. 

 

The newsboy right across the street throws him dirty looks from time to time without actually voicing a complaint, and Credence knows the only reason he has earned this spot for pamphleteering without throwing a single punch is the church’s soup kitchen on Fridays and Sundays.

 

When he can’t stand it anymore, he moves.

 

The first time Ma put him to pamphleteer, Credence had been ten and it had been a neighborhood thing, nothing that took him further than Brooklyn Bridge a couple of days a week. He was of age to start earning his keep in a factory, Ma had reminded him, and wasn’t this much better? He wouldn’t have dared to disobey, he made sure to stay inside the limits and do his job the best he could. She was harsh and had a heavy hand, but only because she wanted him to be  _ better _ \- to save his immortal soul and grant him a blessed existence in Paradise. Credence had been grateful.

 

He grew. So did his leash. The following year he was granted permission for the entirety of Lower Manhattan, a curfew he was never to break, and a stack of pamphlets thrice the size of his earlier ones.

 

It  _ had _ been freedom at first. He had gotten to find about other zones of the city under the guise of identifying new places to better spread the Word. He got to know about a couple of parks, spotted buildings to admire, got immersed by the frantic, bumbling activity of the city during workday afternoons. But it never lasted much. He needed to do his job. He was too ill-dressed to be allowed entrance anywhere he’d like to go in.

 

Credence would’ve never dared to just throw away the pamphlets. The Word had been quoted in them and it rendered them precious. And his stomach churned whenever he thought of how much they had costed and how wasteful he’d be then.

 

Another eleven years and even the streets he had been afforded now pull Credence deeper into himself. His is a kind of work better suited to a speaker, and whatever fight had been in him had died so long ago he can’t remember how it felt like.

 

He can’t remember either when it had been, the day Ma had gotten too disgusted by him to touch him, started preferring the belt to her hands. He towers over her now, and every time they’re in the same room Credence gets to remember how much she hates it. His defense lays in routine, in not deviating, doing his chores to the best of his abilities in a silent, desperate bid to please - and going outside just to not spend any more time than necessary in her presence.

 

He gets through his afternoons walking westwards, his current haunts not nearly as expansive as they had been at the beginning. He goes through them at random, lacks the energy of his youth.

 

_ Chatham Square. _

_ Columbus Park. _

_ Foley Square _

_ New York City Hall. _

_ Woolworth Building. _

 

Credence finds his corners and they aren’t disputed. The newsboys working this zone of Lower Manhattan are all from Two Bridges. They don’t like him, and they say such terrible things about him; Credence would fear them if they didn’t know that attacking him could mean they’d never eat again at the church.

 

_ “May I interest you on the New Salem Society, sir?” _

 

The sound of thunder breaks through the buzzing of traffic, and Credence prays the weather doesn’t get any worse more because he’s used to than because he expects it to work. God hasn’t listened to anything he has had to say since it sunk in his life would forever stay the same, and he started begging Him to not wake up in the morning.

 

He’s an ingrate and a sinner, and it shouldn’t be a surprise he has already been abandoned.

 

It also means that when the downpour starts, he stays right where he is - outside Woolworth Building, still handing out pamphlets until he can’t see straight and the chill of the rain over his thin clothes has soaked deep into his marrow. His mind isn’t there anyway.

 

_ “May I interest you in the New Salem Society, sir?” _

 

“Aren’t you freezing?”

 

There’s a man standing right in front of him, presence sharp enough to cut through static and fog and shake Credence out of the trance. 

 

He’s vaguely aware he is staring - At a mouth curved in tension, lower lip thicker than the upper one. Piercing dark eyes. 

 

“... May”, he starts, still unsure he had heard correctly. “M-may I...?”

 

His had been a continuous broadcast.

 

“A smart young man like you surely knows more than a fixed spiel”, and Credence panics because anyone calling him smart has to be lying, and he can’t decipher the intent behind an expression so severe. The edge in the older man’s gaze makes him feel smaller, stripped bare and plain to see in his old, drenched clothes and the mortified curve of his back.

 

It feels dangerous.

 

“I’m sorry”, he offers. The dialed-down volume of his own voice shames him.

 

“Your pamphlets are falling apart.” Only God knows how long Credence had stood there under the rain. His heart sinks all the way to his feet at the sight of the pulp in his hands. It gets washed away by the drainage when he notices his pruney fingers are stained with ink.

 

He’s thinking of a belt, an icy voice, never loud enough anyone outside the church would hear it. His fear must have shown in his face, because the stranger frowns deeper. 

 

“I think I’ve seen you before”, he almost mutters, and Credence falters. He has been suppressed to invisibility for so many years already. How could anyone remember him?

 

“I, ah”, he tries - because it is a question, even posed as an statement like this. “I come here twice a week. Sir.”

 

“Do you?” his inquisitive voice gets a shiver out of Credence, already numb. Too low, too smooth. “What is your name, boy?”

 

Patronizing, but Credence is used to so much worse it rings kind to him.

 

“Credence”, he says, and then adds hesitantly, “Credence Barebone.”

 

Silence makes the rain even louder. The sound of traffic is amplified by the puddles of water over the cobblestones. 

 

“Did you say ‘New Salem Society?”, and there is no change to his baritone, courteous and dignified. But Credence knows how faces work, his survival hangs on staying attuned to signs of hostility and disappearing if possible.

 

The steel tightening in this man’s jaw gives him a reason to be frightened.

 

But the stranger, he takes a step back and relaxes his posture, and the change sends Credence’s mind reeling.

 

“Apologies. I was crowding you”, he says. Palms open, good intentions, and Credence has no idea of how to take this respectful approach. It’s not like he has earned it. “I think I may have been told about your church before - just not who leads it.”

 

He says ‘I think’ the way other people vow ‘I swear’, Credence notices, and reads the silent  _ ’Barebone’ _ in his lips that follows the statement.

 

For a long moment, he can’t find his words. It has been a while since he had used his own with anyone who wasn’t from the church.

 

“There’s… there’s a meeting next Wednesday at the National Bank, if you’d like to hear more. At… noon. And, ahm. A service at Sunday, 9 in the morning, sir.”

 

All in all, they aren’t words so different from what he had been trained to say. It’s just, this time he really means it.

 

“How polite”, and the man’s lips quirk in something that is close to a smile. Credence stares at them trying to make sense of it, and it proves to be a bad idea. The sight sears itself into his mind, keeps him anxious.  “My name is Percival Graves.”

 

“... Nice to meet you”, he gets out, realizing he should be saying something. His pulse is entirely too loud but at least he can make ritual words work. They’re one of the few things he had learned to do right. “Mr. Graves.”

 

“Likewise”, But Mr. Graves isn’t looking at his face. Credence follows his gaze and blanches - His hands are torn open again, he realizes with a pang of panic. The scabbing had been too recent. It hadn’t resisted the rush of water, and the wind had cracked them further.

 

He prays he didn’t see the bruises. At least the storm had wrinkled the skin and bleached the wounds so the lashes didn't show that badly.

 

“Mr. Graves, you… you shouldn’t concern yourself with it. It’s just because of the rain.”

 

What is he doing, trying to ask anything from a man like this one? But Mr. Graves’ mind appears to be elsewhere, running in an entirely different frequency.

 

“Do you have an umbrella, Credence?”, he asks then, and Credence almost sighs in gratitude.  _ He hadn’t noticed. _

 

He doesn’t want to talk about the reason his palms are so split. That has never ended well for him. People pretending to care about his wounds only to disappear afterwards do nothing but add to the weight that is his lot.

 

“No, Mr. Graves. I haven’t been in want of one.”

 

Mr. Graves looks at him incredulous, one eyebrow quirked at the obvious lie and making Credence’s face burn. For a moment it looks like he’s about to touch at something inside his jacket, and then thinks the better of it.

 

“Guess it can’t be helped”, he says as if talking to himself. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. Keep these, I’ll see you around.”

 

Again the apology, as if he wanted Credence to feel  _ safe.  _ It shocks him just in time to witness Mr. Graves taking off his own gloves, black leather and more expensive than anything he has ever held, only to give them to him - quick and casual. To watch him walking away, and by the time Credence comes back to his senses, the other man is already turning the corner.

 

“Thank you, Mr. Graves”, he says to nobody, and for a second he’s sure these gloves he’s holding so tightly are burning him.

 

It becomes a certainty when the musky scent of cologne reaches his nose.

 

Wallowing is a sin of Pride; Wrath is a sign of spurned entitlement. No injustice has been done against him; he has no right to complain, and yet he would’ve screamed in anger  _ at himself _ if he still could.

 

Desperate prayers and constantly averted eyes, guilt clinging like tar to his nights - No matter what he did, his twisted nature wasn’t something Credence could bury. Percival Graves had been the kind of stranger who worried you until you met him, and then he worried you more. He doesn’t dare to put a name to the last Deadly Sin crossing his mind.

 

What a wretched, stupid boy he is.

 

The gloves are the most comforting things he has ever worn. They don’t get cooler in contact with his gelid, wet hands and it feels like a miracle. But Mr. Graves, with ineffable dark eyes and two moles on his cheek, he couldn’t be from God. Credence has never earned His favor. A messenger from the skies wouldn’t have tempted him to sins of thought.

 

He should throw them away, and yet he can’t find in himself the will to do so. A gift is a gift, and this is the first one anyone has bestowed upon him in twenty-two years. He cradles his hands close to his chest. The storm has remained just as blinding, but there’s at least one part of him that isn’t cold and it’s so much more than he’s used to.

 

Credence can barely hear anything beyond the cascade of traffic and the bustling of water. White haze in his eyes, white noise through the body he’s forced to move if he wants to reach the church in time to hide the gloves, and yet--

 

He carries within him a piece of warmth now, an electrical spark from the first person who has been legitimately kind to him in so long he doesn’t count the time anymore.

 

And  _ it is _ as if something forgotten inside him has clicked. Reconnecting, tuning in with the outside of his flesh. Credence touches his lips and it’s a surprise when he discovers through the leather the shape they have when he smiles.

 

Pike Street remains the same, no matter how many times he steps in it, and the river never changes. Never stops for anybody, either, but his head's too full to notice the alienating rush over his own heartbeat even as he reaches his room, hides the gloves under a loose floorboard.

 

When Ma comes home and asks him about the pamphlets, Credence just tells her an office worker in Tribeca had shown interest in the meeting. It’s a frequent lie, but for once maybe the half-truth of it is enough to be believed. Ma doesn’t press further and dismisses him, and Credence finds out he can breathe again.

 

A gift is a gift, and miracles are miracles.

 

He hopes Mr.Graves shows up. There’s nothing to do about his own wretchedness, but if Mr. Graves can step into their church…

 

He hasn’t felt actual, fervent faith in a long time. But that night when Credence kneels down by the foot of his bed, all palms open and good, the  _ most honest _ intentions… There’s a hum inside his ribcage, a half memory of the hymns he used to sing as a child back when Sundays still meant having some sort of respite as he begs for for this man to not be the Devil.

 

His prayer rises in silence. He falls asleep feeling Heard.

**Author's Note:**

> PS: There's another piece set in the same universe in the drabble collection [The Garden Of Forking Paths Chapter 3 - First Time Sins](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11982936/chapters/27604446), and there's probably going to be more for this 'verse posted in there as well in the future ^^


End file.
